Originally posted at Cultivate

So, how much is it going to cost?

I don't know about you, but we get asked this question pretty regularly. And it seems like it should be a simple answer. Most applications are mainly made up of component parts that are solved problems, like a CMS, signup, a login system, authentication, email sending etc. The expectation is that you'll give a figure, a timeframe and then deliver on time and in budget, which when you say it like that sounds perfectly reasonable.

Originally posted at Cultivate

This is the final blog post in the series Large organisations find Lean UX hard, it’s not them, it’s us!, based on my talks at UXCambridge and UXScotland. This post will look at how we might navigate the politics of large organisations more effectively.

Originally posted at Cultivate

This is part four of the blog post series Large organisations find Lean UX hard, it’s not them, it’s us!, based on my talks at UXCambridge and UXScotland.

In this post we'll cover more tips, techniques and suggestions that will help you communicate more effectively with large organisations.

Originally posted at Cultivate

In the previous post in this series, we covered why you need to focus on oucomes. In this post we'll look at a couple of techniques I like to use to elevate the conversation to a more strategic level.

Originally posted at Cultivate

In the previous blog post we looked at the reasons large organisations are struggling to implement Lean UX successfully.

In this post, I'd like to share my number one approach to improve our situation today.

Originally posted at Cultivate

Many large organisations say they want to use a Lean UX approach. In my experience, they don’t find it easy to execute in reality.

Why is this? I believe we’re not helping adoption happen – we’re not following our own advice or approach, I say we can do better.

I talked about this at UXScotland and again at UXCambridge. I promised to write the talk up as a blog post. I've decided to split this over a number of blog posts, this is the first of that series.

This blog post will cover why we're not getting large organisations adopting Lean UX the next will look at what we can do to help.

Originally posted at Cultivate

Are you frustrated by a culture that hasn't caught up with the digital world?

Do you feel like you're building the wrong thing? New features fail to engage and delight customers?

Are you fighting against a culture of inertia? Trying to sell processes to people who don't understand the business value? Are you in a project that's become too big to fail?

This blog post is a few tried and tested techniques, I've found useful to help get projects on track and everyone on the same page.

A corollary to 'MVP A Child's Eye View'

I've been meaning to write this for a while (About two years!).

Three years ago, I wrote a blog post about my son's purchase of an MP3 player, discussing MVP. MVP - A child's eye view.

This is the corollary to that post, to explain why the right features aren't enough.

Doh! Third time now. Seriously. I just don't notice that it's a version upgrade, and set it off. Then "oh *!#$"

Now, I know I can remigrate most of the stuff I have running, I also have backups I can pull, so it's not the end of the world, but it's tedious and something clicked in my brain this time...

Homebrew maintains older versions. (Unless you're a fanatical cleaner-upper). If you haven't run clean, here's a solution.

A little background.

Recently, my son decided he would like an iPod touch. (well, really, he wanted an iPhone, but he's to young for a phone...) We felt, if he wanted something that big, he ought to save for it to appreciate the amount of money it was. He had some birthday money saved and so the conversation continued.

Sometimes making a tough job easier is as good as it gets.

If you've ever had to paint a ceiling, you'll know it's not a fun job... Whatever you do, it's not going to be a fun job. As I was painting one of the many ceilings that need painting in our evolving house, I realised, fun isn't everything.

Building communities around your product is a really great way to grow your userbase and enhance your brand if you do it right.

You all know that feeling - something's got to give...Time, budget or features? Oh wait a minute...interface! That can give...our code is more important, that's what makes the product work, right? Well no. (And yes, but mainly no.)

A friend nudged me on twitter to write a blog post about this, which was great for two reasons, firstly I was having a bad case of writers block (or at least procrastination), lots of things had made me nearly write a blog post, but not quite catalysed.

OK, so it's sad to admit, but I think about user-interface quite a lot outside of work. (And should write about it more often, but that's a different issue!) We recently bought a new house, which is great, but like a UX project, coming to someone else's work, you suddenly realise all the things you take for granted as 'just right'...